Border impacted in post-Civil War years

Like the favorite danceable tune (danzon) says, “Si Juarez no hubiera muerto…” (If Juarez had not died…), a social studies instructor used to pose this differently.

Instead of Juarez, the instructor would use the name of Abraham Lincoln.

Valentin Padilla, who taught U.S. government in adult education night classes at Laredo Junior College, would ask the class, “Can you imagine how I would have been if President Lincoln had not died?”

A Korean War veteran attending LJC (GI Bill) was always the first to reply to Padilla’s questions, and it seemed the veteran, not the brightest in the class, usually came back with an answer that drew chuckles from his classmates.

So when Padrilla asked the question, our good natured veteran replied, “If Lincoln had not been shot (by Willkes Booth), he would not have died. And if he had not died, we would have missed the Gettysburg Address and Andrew Johnson would have never been the 17th President.”

The squabble with the Congress led to a trial to impeach Johnson, failing by one vote.

Meanwhile, on the Rio Grande frontier (South Texas), information reached Laredo residents about post-Civil War developments in the DF (Mexico City) wherein General Porfirio Diaz had captured the palace at Chapultepec in 1867, while in the U.S., Andrew Johnson was implementing the works of Reconstruction in the war-torn southern states.

In Texas, in the middle and upper Rio Grande, it was altogether a different scene on the border, certainly in the middle and upper Rio Grande stretch with Mexico.

Residents had to deal with lawless and violent individuals and the disorders of Mexican politics as well as the pain of being forcibly detached from Mexico to be attached to the United States.

On the U.S. side of the South Texas border, U.S. Army Cavalry at Laredo (Fort McIntosh), the soldiers’ grey uniforms were the blue colors of the Union.

President Andrew Johnson had begun implementation of Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction as Southerners were granted amnesty, having taken the oath of citizens of the Union (United States of America).

Residents in Laredo and the rest of South Texas essentially were under military rule as civil government gradually would take over.

A.J. Hamilton, described by history as a die-hard Texas Unionist, was appointed provisional governor of Texas, but the ones who really called the shots were the military commanders.

“There were many arbitrary jailings, some justifiable, a great many more simply spiteful,” J.W. Wilkinson observed in “Laredo and the Rio Grande Frontier” (1975).

The worst actions were registered in the Valley, mostly Brownsville, where some followers of Catarino E. Garza (Garzistas) would welcome Garza as one of their most vocal in opposition to the Diaz government.

It was in Brownsville in the early period of Reconstruction that a Union general (Godfrey Weitzel), 25th Army Corps commander, ordered his men “to hang four Mexican malefactors who had gotten out of hand.”

Wilkinson wrote, “General Sheridan (Philip H.), commandeer Union armies west of the Mississippi and south of Arkansas, did not lift a finger to ease the plight of the people of Texas or of any state over which he held authority in the South.”

The year 1865 was significant to Laredo and its vecinos across.

Two actions in Washington were recorded in 1865 when the alcalde was Nicolas Sanchez.

One, the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed Jan. 31, 1865; the second, ratification 11 months later, (Dec. 6, 1865). It mandated that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction (Section 1).”

Section 2 dictated, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”